ves, they might have done
honour to a poodle!"

Eight months after his banishment, his opera "Sylvana" was produced at
Frankfort, the first soprano being Gretchen Lang, and the part of
Sylvana being taken by Caroline Brandt, of whom much more later. At
Munich the next year, he found himself in high favour with two singers.
They were vying with each other for him, while two society beauties
exerted their rival charms. Weber was kept busy with his quadruple
flirtation. He was driven into cynicism, and his motto became "All women
are good for nothing" ("_Alle Weiber taugen nichts_"), which he used so
often that he abbreviated it to "A.W.T.N." In the columns of his
account-book he was provoked to write: "A. coquettes with me, though she
knows I am making love to her friend. B. abuses N., tells me horrid
stories of her, and says I must not go home with her." He took a journey
to Switzerland, where the beautiful Frau Peyermann occupied his heart
long enough to inspire him to the scene in "Athalie," and to his song,
"The Artist's Declaration of Love." He wandered here and there, for
about three years, and his biographer, Spitta, thus portrays him:

"Roving restlessly from place to place, winning all hearts by his sweet,
insinuating, lively melodies, his eccentricities making him an imposing
figure to the young of both sexes, and an annoyance to the old, exciting
the attention of everybody, and then suddenly disappearing, his person
uniting in the most seductive manner aristocratic bearing and tone with
indolent dissipation, his moods alternating between uproarious spirits
and deep depression,--in all ways he resembled a figure from some
romantic poem, wholly unlike anything seen before in the history of
German art."

In 1813 he found himself at Prague, with the post of musical director to
the opera. In the company were two women who took hold of his heart;
one, a spirit of evil, the other an angel of good. The former was
Theresa Brunetti, wife of a ballet-dancer, and mother of several
children, the acquisition of which had robbed her of neither her fine,
plump figure, nor her devotion to the arts of coquetry. There is no
improving upon the description of Max von Weber as given of this
entanglement, so here it is at length, with all its frankness of
exposure and its writhing humiliation:

"He soon conceived for the handsome seductive woman a passion, which
seemed to have deprived his otherwise clear mind of all common sense